A Supervisory System for Accomplishing Long-Range Projects

This article describes a supervisory system designed to help people maintain a steady rate of work, toward the accomplishment of long-range goals. The main features of the system are: (a) written task specification, b) weekly subgoals or deadlines, (c) weekly monitoring, (d) weekly feedback, and (e) added incentives. We applied this system to the supervision of MA thesis research, using a BAB reversal design, to investigate the effects of an incentive system consisting of performance-based points toward a letter of recommendation combined with weekly feedback. This incentive system produced a high and steady rate of completion of the weekly research tasks when it was present, while the rate of completion was considerably lower during the baseline phase, when the incentive system was absent. Twelve of the 15 individual subjects and five of the seven research tasks showed these results. In a subjective evaluation, the participants approved of this type of supervising system. This system may be applicable to the supervision of many long-term projects.